Monday, 18 December 2017

The Opening

(on the opening of the Pavarotti Music Centre, 21 Dec 1997, from 'Left Field')

Ivan Prskalo’s offce was full of bleeding Christs and weeping Marys. Chequered Croatian
fags were on each side of the door. The mayor of ‘Croat’ West Mostar greeted me wearing
a shiny blue suit. This divided town had two mayors: Prskalo on the west side and Safet
Oručević on the east. I was there to invite Prskalo to the opening of the Pavarotti Centre.
This was an important political act, as the centre would only work if it had support from
both of Mostar’s communities.

His secretary placed a tray of coffee and biscuits on a side table. Before leaving the room,
she turned down the volume on the Spice Girls. Unsurprisingly, the brand of biscuits were
Paprenjaci whose wrappers said, ‘These cookies refect Croatia’s history, combining the
nation’s suffering – pepper, with its natural beauties – honey.’

Prskalo told me it was offensive to be invited to the east side of his home town by an
Englishman. I wanted to answer that people didn’t normally bomb their homes, but I felt
that it was better to be diplomatic. I said that I was English, but I was of Scottish and
Welsh ancestry with a Jewish frst name and a Christian family name, but that I was
neither Jewish nor Christian nor, strictly speaking, English. Instead, I told him that my ex-
wife was Croatian, that my children were half-Croatian, that I had made a flm for the BBC
and Croatian TV about the war there and that my association with the country stretched
back more than a quarter of a century.

It was a short meeting. As I walked down the corridor, I could hear the volume being turned
up on the Spice Girls’ ‘Who Do You Think You Are’.

A week later, Safet Oručević’s office rang to say that both mayors would attend the
opening and that they’d visit the centre together the next day.

I gave them a tour of the building and invited them to my offce. I had placed a large plate
of baklava on my desk and, as we sat down, Hamid, the bar manager, came in carrying a
tray with a Bosnian copper coffee jug and three small porcelain cups. All very Ottoman.

Prskalo turned to Oručević . ‘Doesn’t Mr Wilson look young for his ffty-two years? That is
because he is married to a Croatian woman.’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘It is because I divorced one.’

Oručević laughed. Prskalo said he had another meeting to go to.

After he left the room, Orucevic smiled. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll be at the opening.’

Ivan Prskalo was never going to be my friend. We had already been criticised for calling
the centre ‘Muzički Centar Pavarotti’ because the Croats had recently discovered an
ancient Croat word for music, glazba. They were offended that we were not using that in
place of a word recognised from Beijing to Buenos Aires.

Soon after the wars in former Yugoslavia, politicians from all sides actively ‘xenophobised’
their languages. Antun Vrdoljak, Croatian TV chief in the 1990s, declared that,‘Language
preserves the nation’s history and culture ... language is the womb.’ At its worst, the
Croatian Education Minister, Jasna Gotovac, said, ‘The fght for our language and culture
is a part of the war.’ Alija Isakovic, a linguist who published a Bosnian language dictionary
in besieged Sarajevo warned against a purge of Turkish words. ‘If they do,’ he said, ‘none
of them will have a kidney.’ The common word for kidney being bubreg.

This might all seem to be archaic thinking, but this process applied to contemporary words
as well. In Croatia, ‘helikopter’ was to be zrakomlat, ‘telefon’ – brzoglas, ‘aeroport’ – zra na
luka; making the internationally comprehensible into a jumble of incomprehension. Behind arguments over words, there was something much darker. The radio station on the
west side questioned why we’d built the centre on the ‘Muslim’ side of town, an accusation
repeated when my old friend Darko Glavan visited me and said, ‘There are too many
Muslims here.’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and there were too many Jews in the Warsaw ghetto.’Oslobodenje, the Sarajevo daily newspaper, asked me to contribute an article on the situation in Mostar. II decided to deliver my piece in person. I was eager to visit them and
meet their staff. I had briefy visited their offce after it had been shelled and they were
operating from a bomb shelter. I hoped to see they now had better circumstances.

When there, I told them of my experiences in Mostar. One of the journalists told me, ‘Only
three things grow there: snakes, stones and fascists.’1

The atmosphere at the Pavarotti Music Centre in the days leading up to the opening was
documented by Pay-Uun Hiu, writing in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant:

‘Director David Wilson does not waste time on greetings and formal chit-chat. Six days
before the offcial festive opening on December 21 ... time is running out ... “Just follow
me,” says Wilson, while running on the shiny-tiled foor through the courtyard to one of the
performing areas, “we’re just unpacking a grand piano”. At the same time, he explains
about the building: the central courtyard where a fountain still has to be placed, a section
for music education, a special section for music therapy, rehearsal areas, concert areas
and a professional recording studio in the basement. Finally, there are two apartments in
the semi-circled towers on the top-foor. These are meant mainly for guests, but Wilson
also wants to use one of them as a healing and meditation area ... “It sounds romantic,”
Wilson says, “but Mostar lost its bridge and the Music Centre could well be a new bridge, a
bridge to the future, a bridge between music cultures, a bridge to the peace.”’2

Six weeks before the opening, Nicoletta Mantovani visited us. She wanted to check on
progress with the building. I took her inside where the floors of the reception area and bar
were still being laid.

‘Are you sure it will be ready, David?’ she asked.
‘Of course it will be,’ I said as I stumbled over a pile of bricks.

In fact, I was as worried as she was. We’d had endless delays and problems with the
construction company, Hydrogradnja. But I had put my faith in Mike Lawless who seemed
to be practically living in Mostar. He and the local team were doing their best to make sure
the building would be completed to the contract schedule.

Mostar does not have the snows of Sarajevo and central Bosnia, but it does have rains
and vicious winds which sweep down from the east into the Mediterranean plain of the
Neretva Valley. The forecast was bad for December 21st, the day of the opening.

Pavarotti, Bono, Eno, Zucchero, Paddy Malone of the Chieftains, Bianca Jagger and half
the Italian press were to arrive in Split on a chartered plane that had set off late from
Stansted. It was to pick up Pavarotti and his party from Bologna for its fight across the
Adriatic to Split in Croatia. There, the British military had arranged for two Chinook
helicopters to bring them all to Mostar.

Until the last minute, we were unsure whether Pavarotti would agree to fy. A few years
before, he’d been in a helicopter crash in South America. He was understandably nervous,
but he’d told Nicoletta that he would not let the children down and nothing would stop him
from opening the centre that carried his name.

The weather closed in. Rumours spread through the building that the Chinooks were
unable to make the journey. We later found out that the pilots had been so concerned they
almost didn’t make the journey. They fnally decided to fy the long way into Mostar. Instead
of taking the direct route over the mountains, they followed the coastline south and headed
inland up the Neretva Valley.

By mid-afternoon, the streets were packed with children and young people waiting for the
Maestro’s arrival. The building was full to bursting. When I stepped out into the street to
see if Pavarotti had arrived, I saw Spanish APCs and thought this must be one of the few
occasions in history when the opening of a cultural centre was protected by soldiers.

The delayed fights meant that it was going to be a long wait and that Pavarotti and his
party would only have time for a quick visit. The chartered plane had a 7pm deadline for its
return from Split to London, via Italy. Meanwhile, my job was to keep the guests of honour
happy as they sat waiting in a draughty hall. In the front rows were Bosnian politicians,
diplomats and military brass and I was horrifed to see that there were not enough chairs.
Mohamed Sacirbey, Bosnia’s UN Ambassador, and Safet Oručević made light of it and stood at the back in good humour. Ivan Prskalo decided that he was not to be outdone in
this display of civic populism. Unsmiling, he stood up and offered his chair to someone
else.

As rain fell diagonally against the windows, young people had formed a conga line in the
courtyard, dancing to Eugene Skeef’s drummers. Quite a few of the notables looked as if
they wished they weren’t Minister of this or that for a day so they could join in.

The plan was for Pavarotti to visit the Special School on the road into town, but with the
delays, the children there were told they would have to walk up a muddy path to the main
road since he only had time for a brief stop. As the entourage approached, they started to
sing. His car came to a halt and so did the singing as they watched him open his door and
embrace them with a laugh and a huge smile.3

Two hours late, Pavarotti entered the building, one arm around Nicoletta, the other over
Bono’s shoulder. I greeted him at the door and he kissed me. There were tears in his eyes.
His only words were a whispered, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ As he entered the hall, even the
politicians’ faces lit up as the cheering started.

‘I, together with my classmates, practised a song to perform for the opening of the
Pavarotti Music Centre. I had heard of plans for the Centre, but I could not dream that I
would be there or near to Pavarotti. At the end of the song, “Big Bam Boo”, I gave Luciano
Pavarotti a fower. I still remember that day when we waited for him so long and I cannot
forget how strong my heart was beating after his speech. He said, ‘Grazie, grazie,’ I still
remember that. I got a toy from him which I still have. I would like to have more memories
like this one. Thank you very much, Pavarotti.’

Weeks earlier, children had decorated the art room with their hand prints. This gave us the
idea to have Pavarotti and the other guests place theirs under the tablet we had had made
to commemorate the opening. We arranged for trays of paint to be prepared for this. When
Pavarotti’s head of security saw two children standing at the side with the paint, he told me
that the last time this had happened was at an Italian school and paint had ended up on
Pavarotti’s clothes. I was about to order the graffti exercise cancelled when, to my horror,
the children stepped through the crowd just as Pavarotti, Bono and Brian Eno were
unveiling the memorial. Pavarotti gleefully covered his hands with poster paint, followed by
the others. Luckily, no one’s clothes were splashed.

I then had to get Pavarotti upstairs for the press conference. I pushed my way through the
crowd to arrange for the lift to take him up. It was full. Its occupants included the Swiss
Ambassador and a German army general. Unceremoniously, I ordered them out to let the
Maestro enter.

Before the conference, I’d made sure that there were spaces on the dais reserved for
Pavarotti, Bono and a child. As I entered the hall, I saw there were not enough chairs. Tom
Stoppard saw my face and vacated his. Bono picked up the child and sat him on his knee.
I was now being told that the party had to leave for the Chinooks in five minutes. There
was only time for Pavarotti to say, ‘My message is peace. You saw the horror of war – you
see today the peace. The future now is in the hands of the children who will soon be grown
up. Try to live in peace. That is the reason why we are here today.’

It was then a dash back to the lift and just enough time to give Pavarotti and Bono a quick
visit to the studio in the basement. ‘Ciao,’ Luciano called out as he was pushed into the street by an increasingly nervous
military escort. He was gone.

Some months later, I asked Pavarotti if he would send his memories of the day to us and
he wrote this:

‘It is no exaggeration to say that visiting Mostar that day was truly one of the most beautiful
moments of my life. For two years, we had been raising funds through concerts and
albums to build the Music Centre and to eventually see its completion, and to witness
some of the beautiful and talented children of Mostar performing for us on their inaugural
day was simply a joy. The children that day were so very patient. We were delayed on our journey by something beyond our control, the weather! But, when we eventually arrived in
the beautiful city that was overwhelming, and the people of Mostar certainly proved that
they have something very special that is their future. Those children are an example to us
all and a tribute to Mostar. If music is central to a person’s life, it can be something very
special and life-affrming. The Music Centre was built for the children – I can only hope that
making music helps in the healing process and that it will bring joy to the children of
Mostar for many, many years to come.’

The next morning I spent time with Tom Stoppard before taking him to Sarajevo where he
was to spend the night before his return fight to London. We walked through the town. He
was silent and didn’t seem happy. After he returned home, he wrote to say that he’d felt
uncomfortable to be a feeting visitor to a place of such suffering.4

I sat with him in the lobby of the Hotel Bosna in Sarajevo while Anne went to our room to
pack. She is a militant non- smoker and I had to hide my bad habit from her. As the lift’s
glass doors shut on her, I asked Tom for a cigarette. I said that if I was still smoking when
the lift came down with Anne, I’d pass it to him. He happily agreed and spent the time
staring at the 1960s light fittings, commenting that this lobby would make an excellent
stage set for a play.

As he was talking, I saw the light from the descending lift. It was Anne. I passed my half-
smoked cigarette to Tom, but he’d just lit up himself. The doors opened, Tom sitting there
smiling broadly, a cigarette in each hand. He stubbed one out as Anne approached. She told me later that she’d watched it all.

Murray McCullough, Chief Administrator at the Office of the High Representative in Mostar,
had been responsible for the logistics of bringing Pavarotti into town. He wrote about the
opening and started with a quote from Shakespeare.

‘“There is a tide in the affairs of man which, if taken at the food, leads on to victory.” On
the most surreal of days, out of the mists of an extraordinary wet and cold December
afternoon descended a war helicopter into the war zone that is Mostar, with cargo, to open
a music centre for a charity called War Child. It was not surprising then that its famous
passenger, the Maestro, should be a little nervous. Surrounded by diplomats,
photographers and soldiers, he left, tense and confused, in a convoy for a tour of the city,
all the time fghting with his mobile phone to reassure his mother of his safety but, like the
weather, communications were bad. Still he tried, nervous, his eyes staring, his face
contorted with anguish. After a while, the convoy stopped before a crowd of noisy, freezing
and impatient children at the school for children with special needs. They had been there
for hours, but they knew this was a special day and they had come to embrace the heart of
a great man, but still the mobile took centre stage. From the steaming happy mess
stepped the smallest child, blessed but free of the deferential fears that surround normal
children. He climbed, as if by right, into the vehicle. Slowly, but with consummate
gentleness, he ran his little toy down the cheek of the anguished face to say hello in the
only way he knew. ‘Mr Pavarotti,’ said Bono, ‘these are the children of Mostar with special
needs. They have been waiting for you for a long time.’ As if by a miracle, a ray of light
descended, the staring and frozen eyes melted as though touched by a sunbeam. The lips
parted to an immense smile, the contorted face opened the windows of the real world that
is Mostar and its children. Pavarotti had at last arrived and was in full food.’

NOTES1 Article in Oslobodjenje: ‘I understand that there have been criticisms from some politicians
concerning the Pavarotti Music Centre – that it is too full of “Muslims”. Let us start with the use of
the word “Muslim”. I am a Celt of Scottish and Welsh ancestry, with an English cultural
background. I have a Jewish first name and a Christian family name, but am neither Jewish nor
Christian, nor even, strictly speaking, English. I am still amazed that, at the far end of the twentieth
century, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where all people seem to be very much alike and where many are
of mixed parentage, two groups are defined in terms of nationality (Croats and Serbs) while a third
group is defined in terms of religion. This leaves aside the number of families of mixed parentage.

It would be amusing, if not so tragic, that ethnic definitions are based on the father’s name and not
the mother’s. Why is a person defined as Muslim, Croat or Serb based on the male lineage when
the mother might well be from one or the other of the newly selected ethnic groups? There is a
missing logic here. That missing logic continues with criticisms of this Centre which has been set
up for everyone, regardless of cultural, ethnic or religious background. As Director, I wish to involve
all children and young people in our work since my own family is partly Croatian and I have a long
and strong connection with Croatia. It is, of course, true to say that there are a lot of people with
Muslim names in the Centre; hardly surprising considering what has happened in Mostar. This
criticism is like saying that the Warsaw Ghetto was full of Jews. Yes, it was, and why were they
there? Despite the continuing and shameful existence of the Mostar Ghetto, we at the Pavarotti
Music Centre are determined to open the doors of this place to everyone. Those who criticise us
will be disappointed to hear that many Croatian young people come here every day. Two weeks
ago, we organised a percussion and performance evening led by our Director of Music
Development (Eugene Skeef – mixed Zulu/Xhosa). Over 200 people were present, one third of
them from the west side of town. From the west, we also have groups who regularly attend our
rock school and we have been actively recruiting young Croats to join our team of guardians who
look after the building during the day. In addition, the Centre carries out a considerable amount of
work on the west side, with percussion workshops in two youth centres and we act as a meeting
place for youth organisations from across the city and from as far away as apljina and Grude. This
is a role we have recently taken on from the OSCE. We would do more. We would like to extend
our music school work into western Herzegovina, working alongside the music schools in the west.
It is politicians who make this impossible at the moment. I would also remind the public that the
PMC is a War Child initiative, that our very first programme was a mobile bakery which started its
work feeding refugees in Medjugorje. We have also been a major supplier of diabetic medicines in
West Mostar and western Herzegovina. We have, in collaboration with the Croatian Government,
recently constructed an extension to the kindergarten in Pakrac (Croatia). Has all this been
forgotten? We work in other parts of Bosnia Herzegovina: in Sarajevo, Gorazde, in hospitals in
Fojnica and Pazari where, happily, we do not have to watch our backs quite so much as here in
Mostar with criticisms of those we are working with. We have recently started work with young
people in Republika Srpska. We do all possible to encourage attendance from all sides at the
Centre and offer transportation to those who feel uncertain about coming here. Their uncertainty
has nothing to do with fear of this place, but has more to do with what might and, on occasions,
has happened to them when they return home. I would suggest that those who care to criticise us,
take a good look at their actions and the behaviour of those in responsible positions, the police
force for example, before telling anyone that the Pavarotti Music Centre is full of “Muslims”. Those
politicians and others who claim to be so proud of their ethnicity have history against them. Take a
good look around the world – that is if you are prepared to raise your eyes from the puddle of your
and other people’s tears – and you will see that the greatest cultures of the world, the greatest
literature, the greatest philosophies, art and music have been the result of a meeting of times,
places, minds and peoples. To our critics I say, come to the Pavarotti Music Centre and you will be
welcome guests. To those already coming here, I say that you have no reason to stop coming and,
to those who have not yet come to the Centre, you are missing something that has been absent in
all your lives for far too long – music and joy.’
2 de Volkskrant, Pay-Uun Hiu, (December 1997): ‘Music Centre? Yes, yes. Of course, the taxi driver
knows where to find it. Everybody in East Mostar knows it. Pavarotti, says the taxi driver and
laughs. He points out at the bombed-out buildings. Boom, boom, he says. While driving over the
newly-erected bridge, his hands move in a big circle around the steering wheel and form a big V;
he seems to want to explain how the bridge was destroyed. Boom, boom. Then he stops the car in

front of a brand-new yellow facade with terracotta ornaments, an unlikely fairy tale palace amidst
the ruins; the Muzicki Centar Pavarotti which came to life at the initiative of the international aid
organisation, War Child. The funds for the building, seven million Deutschmarks, were mainly
raised by Luciano Pavarotti. Together with Brian Eno, and U2’s Bono, he organised big charity
concerts. Their song “Miss Sarajevo” alone raised £300,000. Director David Wilson does not waste
time on greetings and formal chit-chat. Six days before the official festive opening on December
21, which will include Pavarotti, many other famous musicians and three hundred children, time is
running out. The building was designed by British architects and arose from the ruins of an old
primary school. The interior decoration, however, is far from finished. “Just follow me,” says
Wilson, while running on the shiny tiled floor through the courtyard to one of the performing areas,
“we’re just unpacking a grand piano”. At the same time he explains about the building: the central
courtyard where a fountain still has to be placed, a section for music education, a special section
for music therapy, rehearsal areas, concert areas and a professional recording studio in the
basement. Finally, there are two apartments in the semi-circled towers on the top-floor. These are
meant mainly for guests, but Wilson also wants to use one of them as a healing and meditation
area. This is Oha, says Wilson. Oha, very tall, crew cut, nineteen-years-old. He has impressively
big hands with the nails painfully bitten off. He is the best djembe player in the whole of Bosnia,
says Wilson. But Oha has more to offer. When he was 14, he was one of the youngest soldiers in
the Bosnian army yet now he is one of the local helpers at the Centre. Oha and a group of other
teenagers formed a club during the war for cultural activities, called Apeiron (from Greek
philosophy: the Unending). Oha and his friends are both target groups and future cornerstones of
the Music Centre. Of course the PMC also works with much younger children, but youngsters like
Oha cannot be missed as interpreters, future workshop leaders and with the fieldwork in schools in
and around Mostar. For these youths, the workshops and their other work for the Centre are an
escape from the depressing void the war has left. War Child’s philosophy is to finance and run the
centre for another two years, and at the same time educate enough local helpers to take over and
continue the work afterwards. This Sunday, Oha is very stressed, notes Eugene Skeef during the
drum workshop. Skeef, born in South Africa and former co-worker of Steve Biko in the seventies, is
a phenomenal drummer and has an equally phenomenal gift for music communication. In the small
room, with a view of the strip of land where an aromatic herb garden is planned to bloom, it is
impossible not to hear the forceful call of Skeef’s djembe. With Skeef there is no place for quasi-
serious or quasi-creative playing. “Focus,” he demands, while rolling his dreadlocks into a ponytail.
“Do not play before I ask you to! Concentrate! Watch each other. We want to get into the spirit of
the music.” Gradually the workshop takes on the air of an almost magical ritual. Every single player
gets into the rhythm of his own rhythmic pattern which corresponds with the rhythmical pattern of
the djembe trio formed by Skeef, Oha and Peter Vilk, a young English drummer and music
psychologist. Through repetition of the pattern not a single part of the body is left unaffected by the
sound. The lower djembe tones go right through your diaphragm and with their long waves provide
a feeling of stability and calmness. The higher tones in the faster patterns work directly on the
muscles and absorb all the concentration until everybody’s attention is solely focused on the
music. When this level of concentration has been reached, Skeef increases the intensity and
complexity. He not only increases the tempo, but also the difficult rhythmic combinations and the
tempo in which the patterns change. With extreme precision he moves every participant just a tiny
bit over their limits, while stimulating them with his djembe. His voice has become like a hurricane:
power, power, man! Keep going! Keep watching! Hands no longer feel pain, legs and feet are
moving by themselves. Then Skeef lets his drummers go. The rhythms slow down and the
drummers become Bosnian kids again. “Relax, relax. That was real power energy, man,” he says.
Oha’s day has been made. He feels great after the workshop. Although Skeef wasn’t easy on him.
“I know you’re under great pressure,” he had said, “and that everybody demands a great deal from

you. Oha, please help us with the piano, Oha, could you take those things there and there. But you
are a musician and we still have to practise a lot before the opening. Practise, practise, practise,”
Skeef had stressed. “You know,” Oha later tells us while sitting on the battered old couch in
Wilson’s house, “it is like there is more and more growing noise inside my head which can be
exorcised by the drumming.” Afterwards it is quiet again and he has a moment of peace.
Meanwhile the small living room is getting crowded and becoming more like a youth hostel.
Everybody helps themselves to beer, coffee and tea. “I more or less adopted them,” Wilson
acknowledges. It is a bit unpractical to keep up the beer stock all the time, but guys like Oha, Teo
or Crnji just don’t have any other place where they feel at home. Wilson sees himself a “teacher,
failed entrepreneur, manager and incidental playwright”. At the end of 1992 he and film-maker Bill
Leeson went to Zagreb to make a film about the war in Croatia, where his wife was born. Back in
London he and Leeson founded War Child, named after a play Wilson once wrote. They organised
a three-day benefit festival at the Royal Festival Hall, with artists like Julian Lloyd Webber. Their
ideas about giving aid shaped the War Child philosophy, which contrasts sharply with the old
colonial “we-relief- workers-know-what-is-good-for-you” mentality. Wilson, “if you are serious about
doing something, for starters you have to become part of the community and then really listen to
what is being requested instead of telling them what they need.” Already during the war a bakery
was set up in Mostar providing 15,000 people a day with bread. An insulin transport was set up for
diabetic children and what became evident with all the visits was the repeated demand for music.
As soon as the electricity was working again after a failure, children would immediately turn on
their radios and play their CDs. War Child always left with a huge list of requests and came back
with dozens of CDs and cassettes for the local radio. “Music forms an essential part in giving aid,”
Wilson determined. “Of course you need food and medicine, but you have to strive and keep
people ‘human’ in an inhumane situation.” The idea to deal with this request for music more
systematically and to use music as a “healing force” came after War Child met up with Nigel
Osborne in Sarajevo in 1994. Nigel, as intimates know is “larger than life”. It is true that the
composer and professor in music science at the University of Edinburgh and the University of
Hanover is a very tall figure with glasses, a beard and an impressive amount of untameable hair in
the nostrils. Yet his reputation is mostly derived from the music workshops he organised in the
basements of Sarajevo during the war. With his backpack filled with maracas, triangles,
woodblocks, crotales and other instruments, he “sneaked” his way through the only good route to
the city under siege; across Mount Igman, slipping by the snipers in the dark, through the tunnel at
the airport. In the city Osborne set up different instrument depots, like soldiers do for their
weapons. Through the “bush-telegraph” the time and place where workshops were taught was
announced. At the workshops, for instance, he used a poem by Goran Simi¬, with whom he made
a rock-opera which premiered in Sarajevo in 1995. “The end of the war is half an hour too late,” the
children sang, after three hours of democratic composing and orchestrating, for a public of 40 or
50. At present, Osborne (Head of the Music Department) and Skeef (Head of Music Development)
are mainly responsible for the artistic content of the Music Centre. Osborne provides the typical
Western European, academic approach and he wants to set up a clinical music therapy
department with the help of medical specialists, focusing mainly on the treatment of trauma. At this
moment his postgraduate students are already working at schools in the Mostar region with a
programme combining music education and healing, where Skeef’s African background is
indispensable. Tuesday morning, one day later than planned, the first class of school children
arrives at the new building to practise for the grand opening. Oha is there. “You know,” Oha had
stated before, “I was an impossible child.” His parents’ marriage was not great and he had “fire in
his body”. The war seemed exciting. “You are only a child, what do you know about it.” His father
was forced to flee to Germany and Oha became a soldier and fought on the Mostar front line. “It’s
because of all the films on TV,” he thinks, looking back. “There you have heroes like the

Terminator and children want to be like their heroes.” He says he was lucky. That doesn’t apply to
all his friends. Some of them are gone for good, others he lost sight of because they were Croat.
Just recently he ran into an old friend at the west side of the city. They talked and laughed as they
had done in the old days, but it was not the same any more. “Everything seems the same, but it is
not the same. Everything has changed,” he notices daily. But music also changed his life. Eugene
Skeef changed his life. After the war Oha went to Italy with other members of Apeiron. He just
observed, observed a lot. The sea, the forests, the land. Kilometres of wide, safe areas. It brought
calmness and in this calmness he decided he wanted to be a musician and work with children. And
that he wanted children of his own and a close family life. Yet mostly, he wanted to live. For the
first time, children’s voices are heard in the high, light atmosphere of the Centre. The cleaning
crew, the carpenters, the bricklayers and staff of the music centre are standing around the
balustrades and glass doors looking around and enjoying the site. The children sing and Crnji, with
his long black hair and known for his silent cigarette smoking, depicts, while flapping his arms, a
bird spreading his wings across the ocean. Teo, who was interrogated about the whereabouts of
his father during a surprise attack, and who then witnessed his father’s murder and now has a hard
time falling asleep, plays the snare drum while Oha plays his djembe. Just for a while they are no
longer tough guys. They are no longer soldiers. They are back in what is left of their childhood. “It
sounds romantic,” Wilson knows, “but Mostar lost its bridge and the Music Centre could well be a
new bridge, figuratively speaking: a bridge to the future, a bridge between music cultures, a bridge
to the peace.”’
3 Tiffany Hughes, PMC music therapist: ‘It was cold, wet and almost dark, but we had to bear it.
Pavarotti and his entourage would stop here first to hear the children of the Special School. The
children were excited, clutching the toys they had been given by the Maestro and Nicoletta
Mantovani. We waited, receiving conflicting information about the time of arrival, not knowing
whether to take the children up the road or keep them by the school. They were growing restless
and the atmosphere lay at the fine line between elation and frustration. Adrenaline ran high, mine
and theirs, for different reasons. Through the rain in the distance, with a powerful serenity,
descended two helicopters. This was a sign for me of how long we had to make our decision. None
of the children noticed. By now they were singing their way through every song that we had ever
taught them. The decision was made to take them to the road so that they would be nearer
Pavarotti. We ran in the rain and discovered there was only a muddy strip of wasteland for us to
occupy, but it was better than being fenced in. More waiting. I thought the moment would never
come, but at long last a slow procession of vehicles approached us. The children sang for all they
could, only until the cars stopped. A door opened and in the damp, cold night, a great beaming
warmth drew in the children with his smile. The voices drifted off into an amazed gasp and shrieks
of excitement. The song was lost, but it no longer seemed appropriate anyway. Whatever the
Maestro actually felt at this point, all he showed these children was his heart. They hadn’t noticed
the helicopters, but no one could miss how the smile dispelled the cold and the waiting. Pavarotti
had arrived in Mostar and these children, if any, deserved his attention first.’
4 Letter from Tom Stoppard: ‘The thing I will remember longest is the long straight road which was
the walk from the Music Centre back to the hotel; walking the gauntlet between ruins shelled and
shot to pieces, trying to imagine what it must have been like. Knowing it was impossible to imagine.
Someone pointed out a place where a dance class continued to practise underground during the
fighting. I didn’t feel comfortable in Mostar: to have suffered nothing and to be made a fuss of by
people who suffered much, and lost so much, and now had regained so much between the ruins, is
not comfortable. I only felt normal with children too young to remember anything; and how young
those had to be. But – somehow – the experience was uplifting too.’

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